est the character of their
{349} scientific value on account of the fact that they are no longer able
to give us an answer exactly where our questions become most important and
interesting.

But the ways in which we are able to realize scientifically the idea of a
divine providence are, indeed, not entirely closed for us. We have several
of them; one starts from the idea of God, others from the empiric created
world.

It belongs to the _idea of God_, that we have to think of the sublimity of
God over time and space, of his eternity and omnipresence, in such a way
that God, in his being, life, and activity, does not stand _in_ time nor
within any limits or differences of space, but absolutely above time and
above all limits and differences of space; that he is _present_ in his
world everywhere and at any time. He who objects to this, can only do it
with weapons to which we have to oppose the objection which the adversaries
of the Christian idea of God so often raise against it--namely, the
objection of a rejectable _anthropomorphism_. In contesting the possibility
of the idea of an uninterrupted presence of a personal and living God in
the entire realm of the universe, the adversaries seem to permit themselves
to be daunted by the difficulty which is offered to man in controlling the
realms of his own activity. The greater such a realm, the more difficult
becomes a comprehensive survey, the more the human influence has to
restrict itself to the greater and more common and to neglect the little
and single. The more removed is the past which helps to constitute the
circumstances of the present, the greater is the human ignorance and
oblivion; the more removed is the future, the greater is the human
incapability of {350} influencing it decisively. Such measures ought to
disappear, even in their last traces, when we reflect on God and divine
activity. If once the idea is established for us of a living God, who is
always present in the world created by him, and in whose "sight a thousand
years are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night,"
the final causal chain of causes and effects may be ever so long, and
stretching over this course of the world from its beginning to its end; the
single phenomena may be woven together of ever so many thousands and
thousands of millions of different causal chains: we nevertheless see above
them all the regulating hand of God from whom they all come, and who not
only su